AJ Mirag - Clippings

by Clippings (lit)

  Clippings A. J. Mirag

  Clippings By A. J. Mirag First Published 2008

  Copyright 2008 by A. J. Mirag ISBN: 978-0-557-01301-2

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Cover art and illustrations by kore kan.

  Cover design by Morgan D.

  Although fictitious, the settings are based on real Brazilian prisons as described in many texts, and especially in Drauzio Varella’s non-fiction novel, Estação Carandiru (Carandiru Station).

  Dedicated to my friends Kalena, Ludmila and Theresa Ann Lynn, for their invaluable suggestions and advice. And to kore kan and Morgan D. for their help with the cover art and design.

  Contents

  1. In the lions’ den ...................................... 9

  2. Short-Eyes ............................................... 17

  3. The Professor ...................................... 27

  4. Shadow .................................................... 38

  5. Encyclopaedia from Hell ..................... 47

  6. Visiting Times ........................................ 53

  7. Metamorphosis ...................................... 65

  8. Famiglia ................................................... 82

  9. The Invasion ......................................... 97

  10. Convalescence ................................... 108

  11. Parting Ways ..................................... 114

  12. Decisions .............................................. 130

  “My God sent His angel and shut the lions’ mouths, so that they have not hurt me, because I was found innocent before Him.”

  (Daniel, 6: 22)

  1. In the lions' den

  April 2008, in a big Brazilian city

  Daniel hoped it was just a nightmare, but evidence of reality was beginning to accumulate. The lights were dim, and he couldn’t see anything clearly, but the air smelled of medicines, and sounds of coughs, sniffles and moans disturbed his rest. He seemed to be in a hospital room. Why? What had happened? Was there anything wrong with him? He carefully moved one arm, then the other, and finally both legs, and felt relieved that he could move them freely. He must have been sedated, though: his head was spinning and he couldn't concentrate. He tried to speak, but could only groan. No one came to see if he needed help.

  Although his persistent effort to turn on his side was successful, it resulted in severe dizziness. When the room stopped spinning around him, Daniel noticed there was another bed, with another patient, beside him. At first he thought it was a woman, but then he saw a red, swollen, deformed thigh, and realized it was a transvestite whose silicone had migrated from an injection in the buttocks. It was a disturbing sight, and Daniel closed his eyes to shut it out.

  A few hours later, Daniel woke up with a doctor touching his forehead to feel his temperature.

  “Hi. You look better,” said the doctor.

  Daniel struggled to articulate his ideas and talk. “Ugh... What happened?”

  “You're in big trouble. If I were you, I wouldn't wake up too soon. I'd try to stay a few more days in the Infirmary, because here you'll be much better off than in the place where they'll put you when you heal.”

  What kind of advice was that? Or was it a threat?

  “What do you mean?” asked Daniel.

  “Don't you remember anything?”

  “I remember I was downtown, in a protest against the new government decree, which is an attack on the university's autonomy,”

  recited Daniel somewhat mechanically. “There were a lot of people...about a thousand students... Then a group of homeless who were protesting against an eviction action joined us... I don't remember anything else. What day is today?”

  “Saturday.”

  “And what day was the protest?” asked Daniel, confused.

  “You arrived here two days ago, on Thursday, April 4. Were you carrying a gun at the protest?” asked the doctor, squinting at him through his Coke-bottle bottom glasses.

  “A gun? I don't even know how to hold a gun!”

  The doctor sighed and straightened up. Daniel could finally observe him. He was a tall man in his forties, with chestnut brown hair. “There was a riot, and the Military Police intervened. The demonstrators fought back. Things got ugly; the police used tear gas and nightsticks. Shots were fired. You're being charged with shooting a policeman at the protest. The policeman died. You were caught in the act and arrested. Because you're of age, they brought you to the Detention House. And because you were injured and unconscious, you were brought straight to the Infirmary.”

  Daniel was speechless for a few seconds. “That's absurd,” he finally managed to say.

  “Unfortunately, that's what everyone who's arrested says.

  Anyway, take a rest. As I told you before, it's a bad idea for you to get healed up too soon.”

  The doctor turned his back on Daniel and left the Infirmary.

  Daniel tried to sleep again, but failed. He wanted to shout for help;

  he wanted to see his mother, his father, his sister, his lawyer, anyone.

  But he was exhausted and could only torture himself. He was in prison. The police had framed him.

  “Yeah, dude, this fuckin' sucks,” said a voice coming from his left.

  Daniel turned his head and got dizzy again, but could see that there was another prisoner in the left bed. It was a skinny, emaciated black guy.

  “Are you okay?” asked Daniel.

  “Oh, except for not being able to breathe and for nearly coughing my lungs out...”

  “What's wrong with you?”

  “I have TB,” replied the guy.

  Daniel almost couldn't believe it. Hadn't tuberculosis been eradicated before the middle of the previous century, with the discovery of penicillin?

  “That's because I'm living in the Dungeons,” said the other prisoner, as if that explained everything.

  “Dungeons?”

  “The basement cells. They're pretty damp. The water pipes are leaking, and the cells are crowded. We sleep on the wet floor.”

  Daniel shuddered just to think that those Dungeons might be his future. He decided to talk to the guy to extract more information.

  “My name's Daniel. What about yours?”

  “Jeremiah.”

  The irony didn't escape Daniel. Like “Daniel,” “Jeremiah” was the name of a prophet. Like the prophet, Daniel had been thrown into the lions' den. But what kind of prophet was he, who didn't even know what had happened in the past, let alone in the future?

  “Do you know what happened, or what they say that happened to me?” asked Daniel.

  “You arrived here unconscious. You must've been beaten to a pulp. They said you shot a cop when they started throwing tear gas on the students, and the cop bit the dust. Now you'll rot in jail. But you look like a rich dude, so it won't be too bad.”

  “But I'm innocent!” protested Daniel. “I don't even know how to shoot!”

  “Welcome to the club, brother: everybody here's innocent.”

  _________

  On the afternoon of the next day, the doctor entered the Infirmary looking worried. “You all will be discharged. There was a riot in Block Five and we’ll need the beds for the injured people.

  Please sign the discharge papers before leaving.”

  Unbelievable: they were being practically thrown away and still they had to sign the papers. Daniel signed without protest because he was tired of that pla
ce.

  “Jeremiah, you can go back to the Dungeons,” said the doctor.

  “Arnaldo's going to take you back.”

  Daniel saw a brawny jailer waiting at the door.

  “What about me, doctor?” asked the transvestite, in an affected voice, as Jeremiah left with the jailer.

  “Vanessa, I'm sorry. You'll have to go back to your shack. When we have a vacant bed I'll call you again.”

  “But doctor, it hurts so much that I can't even sit down!”

  The doctor shrugged, as if saying that it wasn't his fault and that he couldn't do anything about it.

  The transvestite stood up, with delicate, effeminate gestures, arranged her hair and her dress with her hands and walked away, half swaying, half limping.

  The doctor waited until Vanessa was gone and then turned to Daniel, who was waiting for his “sentence.” “As for you... Look, normally you would have to go to the Holding Cells. But you're a college student; you must come from a middle class family. You're a young, angel faced boy. You wouldn't last fifteen minutes there.

  Right now, there are more than fifty inmates crowded in one cell. All kinds of criminals, including rapists.”

  The doctor kept staring at him gravely. Daniel put on a brave face, but he was so scared that he didn't know what to say. “I...”

  “Calm down,” said the doctor, interrupting him. “I talked to some of the people on this block, and they agreed to accept you on the last floor. It's a less violent ward, you understand?”

  Daniel nodded. “Where should I go?”

  “Josiah will take you to the Registry Room, where they'll take your photo and you'll change your clothes. The General Director will talk to you there. Only the directors can assign you to a shack.”

  “A shack?”

  “That's what the prisoners call the cells. Now, this is a formality, you know? Because...everything's settled. You will stay here, in Block Two. If they send you elsewhere, call me. I'm Dr. Lopes.”

  “All right. Thank you.”

  “You're welcome. But behave yourself. Don't make me regret my decision,” said the doctor, shaking his finger at Daniel.

  “I won't,” said Daniel.

  _________

  Josiah gave Daniel a malicious stare. He wasn't really muscular or hulking, but the black stains around his eyes did nothing to improve his appearance. When they left the Infirmary, a smell of mold and sewage mixed with creolina1 surrounded Daniel, making him nauseated. Josiah held his arm tightly and pulled him along the corridor to a dressing room with showers, then told him to undress and take a shower.

  The jailer crossed his arms and waited. Daniel took off his tennis shoes, shoved his socks into them and hung his clothes up on a hook protruding from the tiled wall, but the jailer grabbed them all, leaving only Daniel's briefs. “When you finish showering, put your underwear on again.”

  Daniel turned on the faucet: the water was cold and, when it hit the wound on his forehead, it made him shiver in pain. There was a soggy soap bar in a built-in soap dish. Daniel let some water run on it before starting to rub it on his body. The jailer left the dressing room for a couple of minutes and returned with a shabby, yellowish towel, a pair of khaki trousers and a t-shirt with the Detention House logo.

  “Enough. You're wasting too much water,” complained Josiah.

  Daniel turned off the faucet and grabbed the towel that Josiah threw toward him; he almost let it fall to the ground. He dried himself, and then put on his worn underwear, the khaki trousers and the t-shirt Josiah had given him, and finally his worn socks and tennis shoes.

  “Now you'll say goodbye to your pretty hair,” said Josiah, a sly smile on his face.

  Josiah led him into a nearby room, where another official shaved him and cut his almost shoulder length hair, leaving just a bowl shape on the crown and using a zero blade on the sides. When he finished cutting, in a refinement of cruelty, the official handed him a mirror, so that he could see the damage done. Daniel shuddered at his pale, sunken face: he looked like a zombie. His brown eyes were tainted with red, and his brown hair, once long and smooth, was gone. There was also an ugly scar on his forehead. Before that ridiculous cut, the scar could have been hidden under his bangs, but now it was visible to everyone.

  Daniel's via crucis hadn't finished, though. From there, Josiah took him to the Registry Room, where he was photographed, had his fingerprints taken and had to reply to the questions of a grumpy official. Stupid questions, information that could have been found in his papers, which had probably been retained: father's name, mother's name, date of birth... When the questioning finished, the official told him to sign a paper that he claimed to be his order of imprisonment.

  “But I have the right to a lawyer, don't I?” asked Daniel.

  “Are you going to sign it or not? If you don't, this might be used against you.”

  Daniel thought that was absurd. “I'm not going to sign without first consulting with a lawyer.”

  The official shrugged, then grabbed the phone, called a certain Mr. Alencar and told him something like, “the criminal has been registered and is at your disposal.”

  Daniel waited ten minutes seated at the official desk. When Mr. Alencar — a stout man with a friendly look, his moustache turned up at both ends — entered the room, the official stood up as a sign of respect. Daniel stood up too.

  “Menezes,” said Mr. Alencar to the official, “you can go and have some coffee. I won't take long.”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  The official walked out of the room, and Mr. Alencar sat behind the desk.

  “Please sit down, young man.”

  Daniel obeyed.

  Mr. Alencar looked at Daniel's file. “Daniel, you have been brought to the João Ataliba Zamora Detention House, where you will wait for your trial. You have been sent here because you were caught in the act of shooting a policeman. You come from a well-off family. Your life here will not be easy. I will sort you into one of the safest and least dangerous blocks, but precisely because of this privileged condition, some 'problematic' inmates ask to be transferred there. So, beware and try not to confront anyone. You must be humble and respect the House rules. We are being very generous with you, and expect you to fulfill our expectations.”

  “Thank you,” said Daniel, unsure about what to say. “But shouldn't I have a lawyer's assistance?”

  “Oh, you will, don't worry. Our criminal justice system has been overburdened, and sometimes things are not as fast as we would like them to be.” The Director took a deep breath, looking tired. “As I was saying, you won't be in contact with prisoners from other blocks, except those from Block Three, who perform many of the prison tasks in all the five blocks. They are called 'The Cleaners,' but besides cleaning the floors, they also serve meals, do the laundry and other tasks.”

  “The Cleaners,” repeated Daniel, trying to memorize the term.

  “You will get used to the prison slang with time, don't worry. Let me give you an idea of the whole picture: in the Block Three, there are four hundred prisoners in a half-open imprisonment system. They work either in internal workshops, or as Cleaners in the other blocks. In the Block Four, we host about two thousand first-time prisoners in a closed system; in the Block Five, we have about fifteen hundred recidivist prisoners, also in a closed system. In the block where you will stay, there are about five hundred inmates, but you'll be in contact with only half of them. This block was initially planned to host just the Infirmary, the Registry Room and, on the higher floors, individual cells for college-educated convicts. However, due to the overcrowding, the individual cells had to be shared by more inmates, and we had to build more cells on the basement: the Holding Cells, where the inmates are kept until they are sorted into their permanent cells, and the Dungeons, where we keep the prisoners who committed crimes inside the Detention House, or who engaged in riots or disputes in other blocks and were marked for death by other prisoners. Those inmates never leave their cells. T
here are other inmates, however, especially the rapists and the vigilantes, who cannot be put into the Dungeons and request protective custody, that is, they ask to be transferred to Block Two, because it's the only block where they have a chance to survive. That's why I'm warning you: although this is a safer block, you must be careful. If you have any problems, send me a message.”

  “Right. Thank you,” said Daniel.

  Mr. Alencar left his desk, opened the door and came back bringing the jailer. “Josiah will take you to the fifth floor.”

  2. Short-Eyes

  Josiah took Daniel to a caged staircase at the end of the corridor and opened two barred doors so that they could climb the steps. At the staircase, the smell of mold and sewage was even stronger, and Daniel felt nauseated. They climbed four flights of stairs. All the floors were similar — barred doors separated the staircase from the corridors. From what Daniel could observe, the block was built around a central courtyard, with a self-enclosed rectangular layout.

  The long corridors were lined on each side with cells with solid iron doors (not barred doors as in most prison movies). At each door, there was a hatch large enough for a head to pass through, so that the warders could look inside the cell and the prisoners could look outside.

  On the fifth floor, the jailer opened the two barred doors and they entered the corridor, on the left side of the staircase. At the end of the corridor, they turned right, and about half way along the corridor, Josiah stopped in front of an open door by the right inner side of the block: number 414.

  “Here's your shack. It's calm here, on this floor. But your cellie, the convict you'll live with, is one of the nastier guys 'round here...

  He's a short-eyes, you know. A rapist. He loves young boys like you.

  I saw him lurking 'round the Infirmary the day before yesterday. He chose you. You'll be his dessert tonight.”

  Daniel had never heard the expression “short-eyes” before, but its meaning seemed clear enough. He was terrified. The jailer was staring at him, a sneer tearing across his face. Then a tall, thin man in his forties, his pale skin contrasting with his black hair and clothes, appeared at the cell door. His long, hooked nose gave him a sinister appearance.